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Geographical areas

What geographical areas are

A geographical area is the area a measure or quota applies to.

All measures or quotas must be assigned to a geographical area.

A quota may be assigned to more than one geographical area.

A geographical area can be:

  • a single country
  • an area group
  • a region

Defining countries and regions

A country is any soverign state recognised as such by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and the list of geographical areas marked as countries should match the FCDO’s list of recognized countries.

A region refers to a territory or other area. Regions are any area that is not a recognised soverign state but which has its own tariff or origin declaration requirements.

Defining country groups

There are many cases where a measure or quota may apply equally across many countires, in such cases the measure or quota is specified as applying to a defined country group, rather than specifying each individual country within the measure definition.

A country group may refer to a globally understood trading entity, such as CARIFORUM or the European Union.

Sometimes a trade measure may apply to several countries which are not part of a trading entity, such as the Generalised Scheme of Preferences. Instead of applying the measure to each individual country, it is easier to create a country group containing these countries. The measure can then be applied to the whole group.

Grouping countries to apply specific elements of trade policy

Sometimes countries are grouped together to be able to apply specific elements of a trade policy.

For example, the country group Silk or cotton handloom products allows the execution of rules on hand loomed products.

How geographical areas are identified

An identifier for a country group geographical_area_id is structured depending on the type of area.

The geographical area_code field dictates what type of geographical area is involved:

Type Area code
Country 0
Country group 1
Region 2

For all countries and regions, the code is a 2-digit upper-case alphabetical string.

For countries, the two digit code typically matches the ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 code. Though there are exceptions, in most cases this would be due to the country not having such a code when it was initially added.

For regions (unincorporated states) the code is typically a 2-digit string beginning with X, followed by the first letter of the country.

For country groups, the code is an alpha-numeric string of 4-digits. These 4-digit strings are almost always numeric. For example 1011 is for all countries. Some legacy groups do contain letters. For example F006 is for countries subject to phytosanitary certificates.

Within the data there is a parent id mechanism to link geo areas, however this is not in use and can safely be ignored.

Membership of geographical areas

Geographical areas that represent country groups (area code 1) are designed to include member countries. A geographical area group can only contain regions or countries (area codes 0 and 2), not other geographical area groups. A geographical area’s membership of a country group has a start date and where required an end date.

There are a few cases where membership of geographical areas change. For example, countries move in and out of Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) tiers from year to year as they progress or decline economically.

Steel safeguards are assigned to country groups created specifically for the purpose of applying punitive duties against large numbers of countries - these groups tend to change from year to year.

Excluding countries from geographical areas

All measures are assigned to one geographical area.

If the geographical area is a country group, one or more members of the group can be excluded from the measure or quota. This is done by including them in the measure_excluded_geographical_areas table.

The excluded country must be a member of that group.

Both the excluded_geographical_area and geographical_area_id fields refer to the excluded country, not the group.

Entity-Relationship Diagram of the relevant records

Database Geographical Areas Geographical Areas Geographical Area Id char(4) pk Area Code int Validity Start date Validity End date Geographical Area Descriptions Geographical Area Descriptions Description Id int pk Member Id char(4) pk Description varchar(255) validity Start date Geographical Area Descriptions:e->Geographical Areas:w Geographical Area Memberships Geographical Area Memberships Group Id int pk Member Id char(4) pk Validity Start date Validity End date Geographical Area Memberships:e->Geographical Areas:w Geographical Area Memberships:e->Geographical Areas:w Measure Excluded Geographical Areas Measure Excluded Geographical Areas Measure Id [pk] Excluded Area Id [pk] Measure Excluded Geographical Areas:e->Geographical Areas:w Measures Measures Measure Id [pk] Geographical Area Id [pk] … “…” Measures:e->Geographical Areas:w Quota Origins Quota Origins Quota Id [pk] Geographical Area Id [pk] … “…” Quota Origins:e->Geographical Areas:w Quota Origin Exclusions Quota Origin Exclusions Quota Id [pk] Excluded Area Id [pk] … “…” Quota Origin Exclusions:e->Geographical Areas:w

Validation rules

Geo Areas

Code Description
GA1 Uniqueness rule for field combination geographical area id and validity start date.
GA3 Mandatory subrecord rule for geographical area descriptions.
DescriptionNotEmpty A description cannot be blank. Only applicable to records with a validity start date after 1998-02-01.
GA4 The referenced parent geographical area group must be an existing geographical area with area code = 1 (geographical area group).
GA5 Validity contained rule for parent geographical area groups.
GA6 Loops in the parent relation between geographical areas and parent geographical area groups are not allowed.
GA7 The validity period of geographical area must not overlap any other geographical area with the same geographical area id.
GA10 Validity contained rule requiring geographical area validity to contain measure validity via associated measure conditions.
GA11 Validity contained rule requiring the validity of a geographical area referenced as an excluded geographical area to contain measure validity via associated measure conditions.
GA21 Deletion while in use rule for references from a measure condition.
GA22 Deletion while in use rule for references as a parent geographical area group.

Geo Area Memberships

Code Description
GA12 Must exist rule for the referenced geographical area id.
GA13 A group member must be a country or region, not a group
GA14 Must exist rule for the referenced geographical area group id.
GA16 Validity contained rule requiring geographical group validity to span all membership periods of its members.
GA17 The membership period of a geographical area (member) must be within (inclusive) the validity period of the geographical area group (geographical area’s start and end date).
GA18 When a geographical area is more than once member of the same group then there may be no overlap in their membership periods.
GA19 If the associated geographical area group has a parent geographical area group then all the members of the geographical area group must also be members of the parent geographical area group.
GA20 If the associated geographical area group has a parent geographical area group then the membership period of each member of the parent group must span the membership period of the same geographical area in the geographical area group.

Excluded Geo Areas

Code Description
GA23 If a geographical area is referenced as an excluded geographical area in a measure, the membership association with the measure geographical area group cannot be deleted.

For more detail read the rules that apply to geographical areas in the system documentation.